Mideast Muppets Give Peace A Chance Israeli-Palestinian Production Offers The ‘Sesame Street’ Gang

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians may be foundering, but in a make-believe corner of television land, relations are blossoming.

A joint Israeli-Palestinian production of “Sesame Street” goes on the air on April 1, complete with fuzzy new Palestinian and Israeli Muppets created specially for the show.

The show’s creators hope the exploits of Dafi, a purple Israeli Muppet, and Haneen, an orange Palestinian one, will help teach mutual respect and understanding by exposing Israeli and Palestinian children to each other’s culture and languages and breaking down stereotypes.

Lewis Bernstein, the show’s American executive producer, described the series as being about “the possibilities of friendship.”

“Peace is a lofty but elusive ideal in the Middle East,” he said at a party Thursday in Jerusalem to launch the show. “Together we can take our own small steps, independent of any political process.”

The 60 half-hour segments were produced by Israeli and Palestinian teams working separately at studios in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Palestinian segments take place on the set of Shara’a Simsim, a Palestinian street; Israeli scenes on Rechov Sumsum, an Israeli street. The two teams worked together to produce “crossover” segments in which characters from one street visited the other.

“If the adults working on the Sesame Street project can do this, certainly our children can do it too,” said Dolly Wolbrum, the series’ Israeli executive producer.

On the show, aimed at 3- to 7-year-olds, Dafi and Haneen meet each other and begin to make friends - learning about each other’s language, foods and culture. Simple Arabic phrases are used in the Palestinian segments, designed to teach young Israeli children Arabic.

The Palestinian segments are “the first-ever children’s television production made with Palestinian talent,” said Palestinian executive producer Daoud Kuttab.

Since the idea for the show was conceived three years ago, its creators have contended with a deteriorating political situation between Israel and the Palestinians - including a string of suicide bombings in Israel and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. There were also battles between the Israeli and Palestinian production teams over how the two sides would interact in their fictional meeting place.

“We all assumed it would not be easy,” Bernstein said. “We were right.”